Ragnar

The Pitch

Ragnar is a Norse-mythology action roguelike from Fimbulwinter Games, a two-person studio, that spent roughly two years in Early Access before exiting to a full 1.0 release. You play a mortal caught up in the chaos of Ragnarok, running dungeons across the nine realms of Yggdrasil, forging alliances with figures like Thor, Freyja, Heimdall, and Eitri, and building out combat loadouts from weapons, abilities, and divine blessings as you push toward a confrontation with Loki. The genre touchpoint every single reviewer reaches for, without exception, is Hades — and Ragnar knows it, leaning into isometric-ish 2.5D combat, permanent meta-progression between runs, and a boss-focused structure that will feel immediately familiar to anyone who's spent time with Supergiant's game.

That comparison is a double-edged sword here. On the positive side, several reviewers frame Ragnar as a legitimate option for players who've "burnt out" on Hades but still want that specific flavor of stylish, fast dungeon-crawling — a compliment that speaks to how competently the core loop has been assembled. On the negative side, at least one post-1.0 reviewer is blunt that the comparison isn't flattering once the training wheels of "it's still early access" come off: "if this game were still early access I wouldn't be leaving a negative review, but it's not, and still feels like it should be."

The Combat Foundation Is Genuinely Solid

Where Ragnar earns its Positive rating (26 of 31 English reviews, 84%) is squarely in the feel of moment-to-moment combat. Reviewer after reviewer independently praises the same specifics: dodge and dash are "practically perfect and superfluid," the execute mechanic on staggered enemies is repeatedly singled out as a standout ("even Hades could invent this," one reviewer jokes), and the three weapon classes each meaningfully change how a run plays rather than just re-skinning the same moveset. One reviewer with nearly 4,200 minutes (70 hours) logged calls it "great for its price," citing replayability from the build variety alone. A separate reviewer confirms clean out-of-the-box Steam Deck performance with no tinkering required, which matters for a genre where handheld play is a common use case.

The Norse mythology dressing does real work here too — it's not just a skin. Several reviews describe genuine attachment to the ally characters and their voiced interactions, and the setting differentiates Ragnar's aesthetic from the wall of generic fantasy roguelikes on Steam even when the underlying systems are openly derivative. That said, one reviewer pushes back specifically on the mythological texture in practice, noting the enemies "don't feel overly nordic themed," describing them instead as generic crabs and stylized creatures that could be dropped into any other roguelike without much rewriting.

Exiting Early Access Without Much Extra Substance

The recurring complaint that should worry a prospective buyer more than any single bug report is about depth, not polish. Multiple reviewers, including ones clearly sympathetic to the project, note that story is "practically non existent" and that the game currently reads as "a lower budget Hades... at least a year out from being that." A separate reviewer who put in nine hours describes hitting an actual progression wall: buff items and permanent-upgrade currency run out, shops stop restocking them, and the run stops feeling like it's building toward anything, which is a serious problem for a roguelike whose entire appeal is supposed to be the sense of escalating power between attempts.

This matters more now than it would have a year ago, because Ragnar spent its entire Early Access run collecting exactly this kind of feedback, and the 1.0 exit doesn't appear to have resolved it. A reviewer writing after the full launch is explicit that the jump from "promising Early Access project" to "finished game people paid full price for" hasn't been accompanied by the content and story investment that transition usually implies. Given the studio is only two people, that's an understandable resourcing problem rather than a lack of care — several reviewers are visibly rooting for the team and its stated roadmap — but it's still the central risk in the current build, and it should factor into anyone's decision to buy now versus wait.

Rough Post-Launch Edges

A handful of complaints are specific enough to flag directly rather than wave away as generic "still needs polish" noise. One post-launch reviewer reports a large loading-time gap between the game's first and second world areas, which is an odd, specific enough regression to be worth watching for in patch notes rather than dismissing as an isolated hardware issue. The same reviewer flags the use of AI-generated voiceover and music, a detail that will matter a great deal to some buyers and not at all to others, but which is worth knowing going in given how much weight other reviewers put on the game's voiced character interactions as a strength. Separately, a left-handed player and another reviewer both ask for basic control remapping — cursor-key movement support and general controller-binding options — that a 1.0 release at this price point should reasonably already have.

None of these are the kind of showstopper that should override the genuinely positive consensus on the combat itself, but they're consistent enough, and specific enough, across independent reviewers that they read as real gaps rather than one-off complaints. A roguelike selling on the strength of its feel needs its accessibility options and technical basics locked down, and Ragnar's 1.0 launch suggests those weren't fully prioritized before the Early Access tag came off.

Verdict

Ragnar's combat is the real deal — smooth, satisfying, and varied enough that comparisons to Hades feel earned rather than aspirational, and the Norse mythology dressing gives it a genuine identity within an increasingly crowded genre. But a two-year Early Access run should have produced more insulation against the "it's basically Hades with less story and less content" criticism than it has, and the studio's 1.0 exit landed with progression walls, thin narrative, and a couple of specific post-launch rough edges (loading times, missing control remap options) still unaddressed. Worth buying at its NZ$16.49 launch price if you specifically want more of what Hades offers and can tolerate a noticeably smaller, still-growing game underneath a genuinely great combat feel — less compelling if you're hoping the full release delivered the depth its Early Access period was supposed to build toward.